“Mifepristone and misoprostol.” She gestures for me to take the packages from her. There are six of them, each containing four small pills on one side and one larger pill on the other.
“Abortion pills?” Shit.
“They’ll get rid of your problem.”
Your problem.
I feel cold as I drag my gaze from the packages of pills to her. “It’s a baby, Julia,” I repeat.
She nods. “Don’t think of it like that. This is the only way, Isabelle. You need to do it for yourself. For us. For Matty.” She shoves the pills into the palm of my hand and takes her child from me. He mumbles but falls back asleep easily. “You need to go back. If he sees Matty and me here, I don’t know what he’ll do.”
“He wouldn’t hurt you or Matty. He’s not like that.”
“You think you know him? You don’t, Isabelle. You don’t know what he’s capable of. And I won’t risk my child’s life. Go back to your husband before he comes looking for you. If there’s one thing I’m sure of, it’s that he will come looking. As long as you’re carrying that thing inside you, he’ll come.”
Shocked at the vitriol in her words, I stand mute. She exhales like she’s annoyed when she sees my expression.
“Just do it, Isabelle. Get rid of it.”
“There has to be another way.”
She shakes her head and walks out the door, leaving it open. I watch her hurry to an exit, the two hulking men flanking her. Matty’s head bounces on her shoulder. I watch his little blankie drop from his too tired hand and I instinctively want to run to grab it. I hear Jericho then. Hear him threaten someone to get out of his way.
I watch Julia slip out the door and I wonder if she’s right. If I’m being naïve. If he really is capable of hurting a woman or a child to get what he wants.
And I wonder if I’m capable of what Julia wants me to do. Because the little pills in my hand would do more than hurt the child I’m carrying. It would kill him or her.
16
Jericho
Something is wrong.
I get up to the annoyance of the idiots behind me. I could give a fuck. I move quickly in the direction Isabelle had gone. A man stops me at the door.
“Can I help you?” he asks in a low voice.
“My wife is back there. Amanda came to get her. I need to see her.”
“I’m sorry, no guests backstage, sir. If you could take your seat, I’m sure—”
“Get the fuck out of my way.”
“Sir?”
“Amanda. She’s one of your colleagues.” People start to shush me. “She took my wife—”
She took my wife.
Fuck.
“Sir, there’s no one named Amanda who works with us. I’m sorry, perhaps you’re mistaken. If you’ll—”
I shove him aside and dig my phone out of my pocket as I force my way through the door backstage. I text Dex. Tell him to look around the perimeter for Isabelle as I storm through the backstage area.
“Sir?” someone stops me. He’s carrying a walkie talkie. “Are you supposed to be here?”
I look beyond him, but the corridor is empty.
“My wife,” I tell him. “She’s going to substitute for one of the violinists.”
He looks confused and I must sound insane.
“Substitute? Sir, I think you’re mistaken. The musicians are on stage now,” he says, pointing to the stage.
“Fuck.” I push my hands into my hair. “Amanda?”
“I’m sorry, sir, I’m going to have to ask you to return to your seat.” He talks into his walkie talkie calling for security.
I walk away, scanning the large space with all its curtains and corridors and dark corners. I see something near one of the doors marked Exit at the far end. I walk toward it as two men hurry after me. I pick it up. It’s a small, worn blanket with a rabbit at one end. Angelique had one similar to it once.
“Sir!” One of the men calls out as they reach me. Just as he does, I see her. Isabelle. She steps out of one of the dressing rooms looking flushed. Guilty.
“Isabelle,” I say, hearing the exhale of relief in my voice. I tuck the small blanket into my pocket.
She smiles but that smile falters as she walks to me. The man with the walkie talkie steps away as I go to my wife.
“She made it,” Isabelle says.
I look her over. “What?”
“The woman. They didn’t need me in the end.”
I study her. Something is off. She takes my hand and turns back in the direction from where we came. “Let’s go back.”
My phone buzzes and I take it out of my pocket. It’s Dex.
Julia Bishop just got into a car with two goons and a kid. Tell me what to do.
I stop, read it again. My brain rattles inside my skull. I turn to my lying wife.
She’s working too hard to keep eye contact. She’s a bad liar.
“You look flushed, Isabelle. Do you feel okay?”
“M-hm,” she says too quickly.
“We can go.”
“No. I’m fine. I want to be here. Please.”
I smile tightly as my phone vibrates. I glance at it.
Boss?
“Sure,” I tell her and type out my reply. Follow them but stay out of sight.
We resume our seats and I watch my wife as she pretends to watch the stage. I can see she’s deep in thought. Her mind isn’t here. It’s on whatever poison Julia Bishop just spewed into her ear. And given my recent visit to the Bishop house, I can guess what it was.
17
Isabelle
He doesn’t ask me any more questions that night. I find it strange, not like him. I expected twenty questions. But we took a taxi home after the concert. He said Dex hadn’t felt well, so he’d dismissed him early. None of it really fits but when we get to the house, he gets a call and is quick to send me to bed as he disappears into his study.
I go upstairs relieved to have a little time alone. In my bedroom I beeline into the bathroom. The lock doesn’t work anymore. He broke it the day I found out I was pregnant. I don’t think it’s an oversight that he hasn’t fixed it. I take the pills out of my purse. I study them, take in the strange six-sided shape of the four. Abortion pills.
Julia has given me the means to terminate this pregnancy. She called the baby an it. A weapon. And it doesn’t sit right with me. This baby is a human being. A life. Does she already hate him or her?
No. That can’t be. She’s just scared. And I get it. My husband is a formidable man. A devil. It’s what I’d thought him when I first laid eyes on him. A horned devil. And if he threatened Matty, well, I understand her desperation. And tonight, she was desperate.
But there’s another side to Jericho St. James. I saw it the night I played for him. It was in his eyes when they shone wet as he listened. It’s there every time he looks at his daughter. He’s human, too. He feels, too. And there’s something vulnerable inside him. I saw that in that room in the cellar.
I hear the bedroom door open.
“Isabelle?” It’s Jericho. I hurry to drop the packets of pills into the back of a drawer—I’ll hide them properly later—and busy myself brushing my teeth. He knocks on the bathroom door, opening it.